This week, Mark Zuckerberg found himself on the receiving end of double-barreled jury rulings in California and New Mexico that penalized the social media giant for harming young users. The landmark cases could set a precedent for holding tech giants accountable for personal injury, and may potentially signal new momentum in the effort to regulate Big Tech. In Los Angeles, a panel sided with a young plaintiff who argued that Meta and YouTube engineered their products to be addictive, effectively hooking her with the now-familiar arsenal of infinite scrolls and algorithmic nudges. And in Santa Fe, another jury found Meta liable under state law for failing to protect children from sexual predators on its platforms. (Both Meta and Google have said they planned to appeal the decisions.)

The financial penalties are minuscule for the tech firms, of course—$6 million in damages for the L.A. plaintiff, a $375 million fine for violation of consumer protection laws in New Mexico—but lawmakers and legal experts believe the precedents could be significant. On Tuesday, hours before these rulings came down, I interviewed California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez at the Common Sense Media Summit in San Francisco. The A.G.s likened the major social platforms to the tobacco industry, arguing that they design features to maximize addictive engagement even while they are aware of mental health harms to children. They also discussed their legal efforts against Meta, Google, TikTok, and others, and the legislative frameworks required to overcome Big Tech’s formidable legal and lobbying power. Herewith, the highlights of our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity…

Dylan Byers: Let’s start with the big question, which is the headline of our panel: Is social media about to have its “Big Tobacco” moment? Rob Bonta: I think so. There are definitely similarities. We’ve launched a number of different lawsuits in a multi-state fashion against some of the biggest social media platforms—Meta, TikTok. Some of our investigation and research show tobacco-company-like moments.

We have access to internal documents that show knowledge of the harms to children from a lot of the features that the social media platforms use. Whether it be things like infinite scroll, autoplay, beeps and alerts, beauty filters, likes, or ephemeral content, their goal is to maximize frequency and duration of use and to focus in large part on children. They have internal studies where they acknowledge the mental health harms to kids, oftentimes to girls and young women. There are times where we see debates about, “We know this can hurt young people, this can hurt girls. Do we still continue with it?” And it gets greenlit by the top, highest-level executives. One thing that gives me hope about these cases is that they are bipartisan, largely. There are Republicans and Democrats, A.G.s working across the nation. When it comes to the Meta case, I think nearly every state has sued for the mental health harms to kids. So in a world where we are increasingly more partisan, we still agree on protecting kids from the mental health harms of social media platforms. Attorney General Torrez, when I go on YouTube, when I go on Instagram, is that my new cigarette? Am I doing myself harm? Raúl Torrez: In very simple terms, this is a known, addictive product that has been intentionally designed and marketed to children. The harms that the companies have known about for years, which Rob laid out, are not publicly disclosed to people. It’s in the misrepresentations and the lack of transparency and disclosures around those known harms that I think really draws that analogy between an earlier era of high-impact, consumer-based litigation.

I think when Big Tech looks at you, they see overreach and censorship. I think their view would be that you’re addressing “fringe cases,” and they would say social media is fundamentally a force for good. So how do you sort of balance your efforts against the inevitability of social media going forward? Torrez: I don’t think most parents understand that when they hand a device over to a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old and they think, “Well, I’m on Instagram or I’m on Facebook, how bad could this be?” There’s no warning label that pops up and says, “Hey, Mom, Dad, did you know that this increases the risk of suicide? Do you know that this increases the risk of self-harm? Do you know that this actually could enable real-world exploitation of your child? If you agree to assume all of these risks, please say yes before you do that.”

It’s an extreme demonstration, but I have been with too many families who have either lost a child or who have had a child victimized in the real world. For me, this is an unacceptable level of risk given what we know these companies are capable of. Because I believe them a lot of times when they say, “Look at all the things we can do.” If it’s true that you can do all of those things, then you can certainly make these spaces safe for people. You can make the investment. But when you look at the litigation, time and again, internal safety specialists would say, “This could lead to this harm.” By their own estimate, half a million kids a day are subjected to some form of sexual exploitation or sexual harassment on their platforms. Half a million every day. These aren’t fringe cases. But it’s something that can be fixed. If you can fix those things and create safe spaces and enable community and creativity, we should do that. But it requires adults to set the rules and the boundaries for reasonable, ethical business practices. That’s what this is all about. Bonta: I’ll just add, you know, by the position we have in our office and the cases that we bring, we’re not anti–social media platforms. We’re not anti-business. We’re pro-kid. We’re anti–harm to kids. We’re anti–business practices that hurt kids. I don’t dispute that social media platforms are with us for the long term. They have incredible upside value. They can connect people across time and distance. For folks who feel alone and are looking for a community, they can find one. They have a lot of positive impacts… Like any technology, there’s a huge upside and there’s a huge downside. We’re focused on making sure that the downside—to the extent it hurts kids and provides other harms—gets addressed, and that changes going forward. There has been discussion about federal preemption—the federal government stripping A.G.s like you of some of that power to bring these cases. Just briefly, is that something that either of you are concerned about or that we should be concerned about? Torrez: Well, I think we should all be concerned when billionaires show up in D.C. with bags of cash and give the president what he wants and expect something in return that places our communities and our kids at risk. I don’t think the American people are going to abide by that. I don’t think the jurors who consider these cases are going to be tolerant of that kind of behavior. But it’s something that we have to be mindful of. Bonta: When it comes to regulating A.I. and regulating social media platforms, I am against federal preemption. I think that the federal government could and should create a floor of protection above which states can move if they wish to provide additional protections. The idea that the federal government is going to preempt, in the A.I. space or in the social media platform space, and occupy the field—what they are likely to do is nothing and then prohibit states from doing anything. This is a place where more watchdogs on the block is better. More entities, including states who have a job and a duty to look out for the health, safety, and welfare of their people, should be fully engaged and doing our part as well. So my hope is that instead of preemption, Congress and the federal government create a floor of protections, and then states can do more as they see fit.